Jay Harvey Upstage

  Relaxed Pacifica: Vamos, Ganatra, Holloway, Hartman The last time I heard the Pacifica Quartet on the Ensemble Music Society schedule (March 2021), the caution everyone was feeling at the height of the pandemic made live-stream exposure advisable. But the quartet's excellence was already well-known to me via its CD series, "The Soviet Experience." And its stature among local music-lovers was carved in stone with its live   participation in the chamber-music phase of the 2017 American Piano Awards.  With a few personnel changes (in second violin and viola chairs) since its founding 32 years ago, this ensemble has been prolific both in the recording studio and on the concert stage. First violinist Simin Ganatra and cellist Brandon Vamos are the mainstays; the current roster is filled out by second violinist Austin Hartman and violist Mark Holloway. EMS Indianapolis has pitched its tent for the 2026-27 season on the United States' 250th anniversary this year, celeb...

  Even devoid of human figures, the set suggests multiple ways in.  Late into its run, I took in a stage adaptation of "The Da Vinci Code," Indiana Repertory Theatre 's season opening production. It will travel to two other theaters later this season. For this one, it meant unaccustomed catching up, which seems quite suitable to a play that prioritizes catching up to what has been revealed before. The audience is put virtually into the skins and minds of the far-flung characters as a murder mystery turns out to enfold the secret of the ages in Western civilization.  Adapted by Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel, based on Dan Brown's novel of the same title, the technically splendid production runs through next Sunday at the IRT. Benjamin Hanna directed the show, revealing the sort of manipulative precision that enables some people to solve a Rubik's cube in a dazzling total of seconds.  Dan Brown's recurrent professor, Robert Langdon   I don't know how much h...

The crickets and the fog and the young men of Tarry Town moseying about: like most spooky tales, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" needs just a few signposts of nocturnal mystery to set the appropriate mood, with credit going to the design expertise of Laura E. Glover (lighting) and Mike Lamirand (sound), among others. The version that Dance Kaleidoscope has mounted to start its season adapts Washington Irving's story for a narrative that doesn't need the early American author's flowery language to plunge to the essence of a Tarry Town schoolmaster's credulousness and the insufficiency of his wooing as the linked triggers of his eventual disappearance.   Guest choreographer Joshua L. Peugh has also been in residence to Zay of DK as bewitched schoolmaster Ichabod Crane direct the show, which runs through Oct. 11 at McGowan Hall . On Sunday, DK member Zay gave a fascinating performance as Ichabod Crane, an ambitious, doomed teacher, portrayed as gangly and awkwar...

  There could be little doubt that Karisa Chiu displayed an Karisa Chiu, who has local family links unmistakable star quality in her performance of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto Saturday night at Hilbert Circle Theatre. So it's not a matter of "recency bias," I hope, to find me unsurprised that the jury awarded her the gold medal in the twelfth quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. Heard and seen live-streamed, with Leonard Slatkin conducting a thoroughly engaged Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, her performance of this perpetual audience favorite concluded the IVCI's concerto finals phase. Less than an hour later, jury president Jaime Laredo announced how each of the finalists placed, from sixth to first. To start with, they are Lina Nakano of Japan, sixth; Yesong Sophie Lee of the United States, fifth; Xunye Zhang of China, fourth, each of whom carries the designation of "laureate." Besides Chiu, the 2026 medalists are Elli Ch...

Now the famously non-arm-twisting judging procedure of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis once again approaches validation, as six finalists merge from 38 registered participants who convened on Sept. 17 here to begin the well-organized sorting out of scores independently arrived out, with  any outlying totals ineffective in swaying the juried result. At the end of the concerto finals Saturday night, the three medalists will be announced at Hilbert Circle Theater, with those finishing in fourth, fifth and sixth place honored as laureates. Having missed a large amount of the preliminary and semi-final rounds, it's no surprise that I have first-hand impressions of only two participants to offer, based on those initial phases.  Karisa Chiu My most recent impression is of Karisa Chiu, who comes from a musical family with Indianapolis roots. Her uncle, Frederic Chiu, grew up here and made a notably celebrated appearance at the Van Cliburn competition in 1993, lau...

Original costume designs for "The Rite of Spring"  Lots of risers in the orchestra, lots of youth in the audience.  Clearly something outsize and extra-inviting was on hand Friday night when the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra opened the 2026-27 season at Hilbert Circle Theatre. With the program having been already finely honed in performance the night before at Indiana University, the ISO under music director Jun Märkl was especially primed to respond to the historic, perpetually challenging demands of Igor Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." The 1913 ballet has been  known since almost exclusively as an orchestral showpiece, without any choreography except that conjured up in listeners' heads.  The scenario of the ballet lent the young composer a form, culminating in a virgin's fatal sacrifice to propitiate the gods. The prehistoric Russia evoked suggested that the Ballets Russes creators' enduring innovation would be primarily musical and convulsively...